«Folk album of the month (August)»
Throughout the album, Maurseth’s fiddle is bowed, plucked and droned, evoking winds and weathers of all strengths. Her tentative, edgy melody on Kalven Reiser Seg (The Calf Rises), conveying the early hours of a deer’s life, is also a highlight.
Mirra is the kind of, many-layered, multi-textured record that the Hubro label
(home to Geir Sundst0l, Ståle Storl0kken and M0ster! among others) specialises in - but this is one of the best. Put it on your bucket list as well.
Kevin Whitlock
Top of the World
Benedicte Maurseth's love of, and inspiration in, the environment of the wind-swept alpine Hardangervidda plateau in Norway - where she was raised - abound in the sounds of this album.
Jeff Kaliss
Maurseth conceptualized and composed haunting, repetitive, timeless, and folk-like themes, enriched cleverly by Stene, Eilertsen, and Qvenild, and at times flirts with vintage Krautrock. Mirra matches remarkably the thousands of years old sounds of the wild reindeer, the vintage, folky sound of the Hardanger fiddle, with Maurseth’s most touching musical vision.
Eyal Hareuveni / Jan Granlie
Like its predecessor Hárr (2022), the album carries the memory of Maurseth’s ancestors, who were hunters and reindeer herders. Mirra is a meditation with sound – and a reflection on sound’s ability to remember, and reconnect us to the world.
Elodie A Roy
Musically, although springing off from folk, the closest analogy – attitudinally, not stylistically – is of Jon Hassell’s Fourth World Music were it melded with first-album-period Harmonia and shoegazing’s shimmer at its most impressionistic. This, though, is a pointer not a specification. The wonderful Mirra exists in its own space.
Maurseth's roots in folk tradition reverberate through her communicative melodic phrasing, but on Mirra, with bassist Mats Eilertsen, keyboard player Morten Qvenild and percussionist Håkon Stene, she undertakes a journey into realms beyond categorisation.
Julian Cowley
This is a deeply immersive work, its themes, motifs and sounds moving in patterns that repeat and modulate. The entire work follows the reindeer’s annual cycle of birth, searching for food, near constant movement and grazing, and incorporates the grunting and pawing sounds they make as they feed and interact.
Musikken på «Mirra» kjennes kompromissløs. Det eneste som står i fokus er å formidle historien om dyrene, landskapet, naturen og menneskets rolle som observatør av det. Det oppleves som at alle bevegelser har en hensikt, samtidig som musikken utfolder seg like fritt som naturen selv.
Live Rasch
Benedicte Maurseth is both outstanding on her fiddle and a sharp thinker and composer who opens herself to modern musical impulses.(...) Environmental activism has rarely felt so comforting - this is a poignant, conceptual work about the wild reindeer that are about to disappear from her surroundings in Eidfjord in Hardanger.
Audun Vinger
You can almost feel the sensation of being out in nature and sucking in deep breaths of air into your lungs. It is something fresh, something essential, about Maurseth's open musical works... Powerful is not too strong a word. Ando Woltmann
"Mirra" thematizes humanity's relationship with nature and wildlife, and the impressions from the music settle deep within the body. The poetic soundscape that emerges is both captivatingly beautiful and alarmingly powerful.
Arild R. Andersen
A minimalist masterpiece (...) A clear candidate for Album of the Year!
Lars Mossefinn
All in all, Mirra emerges as a fruitful encounter between minimalism and improvisation, between contemporary and tradition. There are also passages of significant melodic beauty, smoothly woven together with field recordings and more sonically descriptive sections.
Arvid Skancke-Knutsen
"En stor naturopplevelse"
Geir Rakvaag
Mirra reflects how centrally important the natural world is for her and for what she does musically. It begins with the sound of reindeer (a mixture of grunts and tinkling bells) and it's not until about a minute in that we can start to pick out out the distinctive tone of a Hardanger fiddle.
Mike Adcock
Mirra continues the thread from my previous work Harr (2022), with ecosophy as its guiding stone, this time with the reindeer in the lead role. They are remarkable, beautiful creatures-but also threatened. Mainly by humans, who slowly but surely reduce their space, year by year. Unless we’re careful, the wild reindeer of Hardangervidda may disappear forever.
It is a sobering but necessary conclusion to a suite of songs that is a delight to listen to, but contains essential warnings. Hopefully people will listen in both senses of the word.
Mr Olivetti
Beyond these collaborations, this piece is distinguished by other animal recordings, with the presence of sounds coming from arctic foxes, gyrfalcons or marsh harriers, all endangered species to which Benedicte Maurseth pays a beautiful tribute with this convincing new work.
Maurseth mischt ihre Musik dazu, als Ambiente wie für sich, nicht als Folklore der Hirten und Jäger. Karg, monoton, hartnäckig, selbstgenügsam, zyklisch, mit bebenden Strichen, scharrenden Lauten. Vibrato, Spalt- und Dröhnklänge und ein subtiles Geflecht aus wehmütigem Feeling.
Airy, acoustic, lyrical, dreamy, relaxed folk music.
Girolamo Dal Maso
That archaic and modern sounds can combine beautifully is impressively demonstrated here.
Karl Lippegaus
A thing of wild beauty
Jim Wirth
«Mirra» is an immersive experience to be listened to with extreme calm, savoring every single sound that makes us imagine the wonders of Eidfjord and their reindeer.
Gilberto Ongaro
Maurseth gives us music that is beautiful, almost comforting in its cycles, while reminding us that the very subject - wild reindeer - is vanishing under human pressure. The listener is seduced into the circle, but the circle itself may be breaking. Mirra is therefore both celebration and requiem, a record that teaches endurance while quietly asking whether endurance will be enough.
Vito Camarretta
It's hard to repeat the indispensable Hárr. Yet Benedicte Maurseth succeeds. Her new album, Mirra, sounds even richer and more enchanting than her previous album, released by the renowned Hubro.
Roberto Mandolini
Both works demonstrate her connection to the deep ecology of Arne Næss, the creator of an ecosophy aimed at highlighting how humans are part of an ecological system interdependent with nature.
Alessio Surian
Concert reviews
Så er vi med ett inne i flokken, med villreinlyd rundt oss. Det låter enda mer levende enn på albumet. Jeg blir hensatt. Dette kjennes. Musikken nærmer seg dyrene uten å forstyrre dem. Det er både vakkert og bevegende.
Arild R. Andersen
Jeg lar meg rive med i reinens vandringer, og kjenner det på kropp og sjel nå reinklovene prøver å skrape seg ned gjennom snø og is til den magre kosten av reinlav og annet som dekker fjellet her oppe. Framføringen av verket i det gamle Agder Teaters hovedsal understreker hvordan vi er i ferd med å utslette en av naturens aller største verdier.
Johan Hauknes